Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Archive for July 25th, 2010

So, Chavez will not be going to Cuba, just in case Colombia attacks. Funny thing is that I have yet to hear Colombia mobilizing anything to the border, in contrast to “you know who” who mobilized and is ready to cut off oil supplies to the US if Colombia attacks.

And funny man Rafael Ramirez tells us from Havana, that he will follow orders.

Well, two questions: One, could he say he would not follow orders and stay in his job? Two: What the hell is he doing in Havana?

Seriously, with so many problems here, why is Ramirez in Cuba? PDVSA’s oil production is going down, food shows up rotten everywhere, there are National Assembly elections in September and everyone wants to get rid of him, and he spends the weekend in Cuba?

And pardon me Rafael, but you know a lot about producing less oil, a suprise would be that you are ready to increase production, not lower it, you do that routinely.

And in a not so routine action, after intervening the trout farm in Merida, the Government took a gigantic step and regulated the price of octopus at Bs. 15 per kilo. that’s Bs. 6.8 per kilo, which nobody knows how much it is in foreign currency, because octopus is not on the accountant’s list, so its hard to tell whether you should divide by Bs. 2.6, Bs. 4.3, Bs. 5.3 (SITME) or the mystery price nobody wants to talk about. Paul the octopus who predicted Spain would win the world soccer cup was not worried, he has no way of figuring out if this endangers him or not.

But really, how much octopus do people eat in the LLanos? Go figure. I guess if you want to control inflation you have to go all the way down to micromanage octopus prices. Funny, I would have thought squid was more important. It’s tastier…

But it is not clear who sets priorities.

Take the TSJ (Supreme Court) for example. Despite Art. 28th. of the Constitution which says you should have access to all information of relevance, the Supreme Court , says: “On, no, but not our salaries” and even if you don’t want to know our salaries, you have to say why you want the information and how you plan to use it. Imagine something like this:

“I want PDVAL to give me data about imports and all invoices, so that I can prove so and so is corrupt and paid so and so commissions to so and so, denounce him in front of the Comproller and make him go to jail”

Sure guys, wait for lines to form filling out the forms. By the way, is it true Supreme Court Judges make four times Chavez’ salary?I don’t want to know, just wondering.

And in another weird episode of this Bolibanarian democracy, the Peoples’ Ombudsman threatened those (The people!) that denounce false things with jail. The case was that of some neighbors that denounced that the water in the Pao-Caniche dam in Carabobo was not adequate. Her office went and checked and found it fine, which then it meant that that whole thing was politically motivated.

I wonder what she thinks about Chavez saying that Colombia may invade us? This is the third or fourth time Chavez has said this was going to happen. When does it become false? Don’t people get edgy when Chavez says this? What’s the difference? After all, Chavez has privileged information, but it takes a certain level of expertise to know if water quality is good or not.